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Influence the Influencer: How to make the most of Bitly's Realtime Tool!

This entry was written by one of our members and submitted to our YouMoz section.The author's views below are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz.

With Google search and analytics evolving on a frequent basis, it makes our jobs as search engine marketers all the more cumbersome. For instance, the latest Google update ‘Hummingbird’ has completely transformed the dynamics of online data mining and information search. Now, it’s all about fresh and relevant content!

This is where the question comes from: How does one create a super-hit blog post that has the potential to go viral in a matter of minutes? (Okay, in hours if not minutes!) You must have seen bloggers, like Erik Wemple, Jenny Lawson, Christina Warren and more, who create blog posts that become viral right away. While yours just never go beyond the average.

Ever wondered what is stopping you from becoming a star blogger in your niche?

No, it’s not about skills or PR. Great blog posts need more than good writing skills or PR. It takes the RIGHT POST for the RIGHT AUDIENCE – and most importantly, support of an INFLUENCER (more the merrier!), to get a post viral.

Notice how a single RT from Rand (Influencer) has given boost to Cyrus’s (Blogger) post! That’s exactly what I’m talking about.

The idea is not to create a post that YOU want to share, rather make a post that the INFLUENCERS want to share.

Create What Influencers Want

I agree that it’s really hard to come up with a blog post that is liked by people whose shares are read by almost tens of thousands of readers. But with the ‘Realtime tool’ (rt.ly), you can make that happen. Realtime, as the name suggests, is a real-time discovery search engine tool created by Bitly that tells you what people are viewing in the present (as in right now).

Goal # 1: Search for Trending Keywords

The first thing you need to do is identify what genre of posts your influencers in your niche like to share. I’ll take my field of SEO as an example. People like Rand Fishkin (Moz) and Matt Cutts (Google) are among the most influential personalities with a massive fan following and mostly share posts related to ‘Search Engine Optimization’ or ‘SEO’. You can do the same for your niche.

Once you know your desired keyword(s), you can use Realtime tool to search for trends and platforms on which it is most viewed. This will give you a list of all the posts related to your keyword that are currently trending along with the number of clicks. You can also save the stories that you find interesting by clicking on ‘Bitmark’ button.

Goal # 2: Find Trending Topics in your Niche

Your next goal is to narrow down your search to your niche with the help of Realtime tool. For instance, I want to find what topics are trending at the moment with the keyword ‘SEO’ that related to ‘technology’. This will give a more focused search on what SEO topics are trending in that specific niche.

Goal # 3: Find Trending Social Networks:

Next you need to identify the social network which has the most viral effect on those posts. This will give you an opportunity to see what topics are going viral through which social networking platform the most. That way you can target the right influencer through the right platform. Click Create a story for this search:

Scroll down to the page and you’ll see the Top link Referrers for the searched term: (For instance, if you are writing an article on SEO in tech, Facebook is more likely to get your post viral!)

Goal # 4: Know what is Viral in your Region:

To make your topic search even more specific, you can find trending stories that people in a particular country/city are reading in real-time. So if your target audience for blog post is ‘Pennsylvania’, you will know what posts to write for them.

Goal # 5: Find what Top Sites are writing about:

Your next goal should be to discover what sorts of topics are being covered on top sites like Mashable and Huffington post. This is because all the top social media influencers are followers of these high PR blogs and love sharing what they read here. Of course, you will have to search from domains that are relevant to your niche.

For instance, in my case, ‘moz.com’ would be an ideal domain to search for trending topics related to SEO. All you do is write the domain you want to search and you will get specific stories that are being watched on that particular site/blog.

Goal # 6: Know Your Audience Language:

Not every blog/site has readers who like to read a post in the universal ‘English’ language. Your blog might be in Dutch, French, Spanish or even Russian language. Or you might have an audience that loves to read articles in their native language. That is why your next goal is to find the trending topics in the specific language that your target audience is reading. This way you can create a more personalized post for them which will appeal them more.

How to Create and Analyze a Story:

To analyze a particular story, just press the blue circular icon labeled ‘i’ at the bottom corner of each story. You can also form a summation for the entire search result by clicking on ‘Create a story for this search’ as illustrated below.

When you click ‘Create a Story for this Search’, the Realtime tool aggregates entire data for a group of links related to that story and shows the number of ‘Clicks’ and ‘Saves’ that it received so far. The story generated also revealed a ‘Compositional and Trend Analysis’ of the entire story using charts and graphs. You will see below how it lists the ‘Top Links’ along with its total number of clicks and the rate per minute for each link. This gives you a better understanding of which specific story is more popular than other similar ones.

It also illustrates ‘Geographical Distribution of Readers’ via map showing clicks received from each country and city. The map statistics are also listed in the form of ‘percentage (%) of clicks’. This way you can ascertain which topic is trending in which part of the world.

Your Turn – Make it Viral:

Now that you have learned how to create the perfect viral post using Realtime, try to make a post yourself and share it with your influencers. You will feel the difference. I would also love to hear your experiences and suggestions that you might have on how to make a viral post.

About ssunderani —
Sharjeel is an SEO consultant at ZillionDesigns. He specializes in search engine marketing and online reputation management. Having managed online marketing campaigns for clients from large enterprises to small businesses, Sharjeel has an in-depth understanding of how to create, position, and market content which is gripping to both target audience and search engines.

11 Comments

Sharjeel, this is a fascinating post! Especially when it comes to researching very niche or location-based topics. At a time when thousands or more pieces of content flood the Internet every day, it is important not to get "lost in the flood." And your advice here has some great ideas on how to stand out today.

I just had one question because it was not clear: Does this tool have the ability to analyze only content that is shared via bit.ly, or does it analyze content that is shared everywhere? (The latter would be seemingly infinite and impossible -- but if it is true, then that would be amazing!)

For now, realtime just analyzes content shared via bit.ly. But seeing the popularity and potential of the realtime tool, I hope it will expand its support for the content shared everywhere on Twitter. And yes, that would be awesome! :)

Samuel, I don't think Bitly real time analyzes all networks. There's a tool called Buzzsumo that does though. I actually think it's better than Bitly real time since it offers a ton more data on what content was shared the most for any topic, or domain across all the major social networks like G+, Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. Hope that helps.

I realize that Realtime is still in the beta testing phase, but I tried using it on a bunch of keywords, a whole bunch, and most of them returend "no results found". This could be a great tool, but it clearly still needs a lot of work.

I have tried with some of my niche specific keywords in this tool and it is showing some awesome results. I would definitely use this tool as a part of my online strategy. I am sure it will boost my online marketing campaign.